On September 25th 2006 I will begin my 27 month adventure with the United States Peace Corps as a Biology teacher in Mozambique. This journal is public and is meant to be a record of my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer. DISCLAIMER: All of the insights and quandries are mine and not endorsed by or affiliated with the United States Peace Corps.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Teaching? What?

Dear Family and Friends,

Thanks to the lovely Sveta for pointing out that I´m an idiot and don´t know my own login to the ophoto site! Here is the correct info:www.ophoto.comlogin: lbelazis@gmail.compass: picturesThe pictures are uploading as I type, 11 have gone up so far I have another 30 minutes of internet, so hopefully you´ll get a reasonable assortment of pictures, and you will definitely actually get to see Moçambique this time!

Thanks also to Mummy and to Sarah Pettit, the wonderful people who sent me letters this week! --this is a not so subtle guilt trip for the rest of you ;)

So, on to my life in Moz:I have now (with some degree of success) taught three classes on the digestive system in Portuguese to actual Moçambican students. Crazy, i know. This week we had Micro school (each person gives a 20 min lesson per day), and I taught 8th grade bio, which is the human body. It´s a rather odd feeling to think that I planned lessons in Portuguese, gave lessons in Portuguese, and the kids (actual mozambican students) actually answered the questions that I asked them in Portuguese! My langue skills are still rather pathetic and limited, but we have all come along way (especially us bio teachers because we have more opportunities to use it/be forced to use it than the english teachers who aren´t supposed to use any Portuguese in their classrooms).

Next week we have Model School, which means full-length 45 minute lessons each day, and administering a cumulative exam on what we´ve taught on Friday. We´ll then have another week of Model School, which may be a different grade (9th is plants, 10th is genetics-evolution). My drawing skills are going to have to improve rather dramatically in the next two years, because the only visual aids that the kids are going to see are ones I make--few to none of the students have text books, and other resources are tricky to come by.

It´s amazing how time flies by when you´re typing away frantically in an internet cafe--juggling multiple windows of blogging-email-photos! It´s hard to decide what to write about in the little time that I have, so let me know what you want to hear about!The wild life? Neat little birds with bright blue stomachs, roosters (which contrary to everything I remember learning do in fact crow all. night. long.), sea turtles, whales, monkeys, dogs--of which Mozambicans are petrified--by the way the word for dog is cao, pronounded cow, which I think is funny, lots of lizards--gala galas and geckos, but not too many big things. Most of the large animals were killed in the civil war--one side hunted them for food, and the other side hunted them so the other side couldn´t eat them. Alas, no elephants for me.